14 comments:

Appalling, yes. I worry that it is also virulent and contagious because too many people need too few catalysts to become worse than dangerous. These are, my friend, strange, dangerous, and disturbing times.

How is it that so many of those terrible tweets are to be considered left-wing? And some that are labeled jokes, are not intended by their writers as jokes. Is it because a Republican was shot? Is it because a white guy was shot?

Conservatives, moderates, everyone in between and up and down ~~ insensitivity is insensitivity and has nothing to do with a group.

Trump has led and continues to lead the was to this type of insensitivity, and has throughout his campaign at his rallies when he would incite violence and then defend it, and as recently as his comments about Khan after the London attack. Have only "left-wingers" been appalled?

Left wingers I know are appalled at the shooting. Is this really the time for conservative writers to try to make some political point. Is this how an argument against "left-wing" health care ideas should proceed, to find a poorly-timed, insensitive tweet that point out the care the victims will received?

We are being led to the sewers of human debate and democratic process, and it has been going on now for far too long.

I see a lot of people who angry and intemperate, Linda, but I don't see much call for violence in those comments. As a journalist who has been the object may comments over the years, most of these seem par for the course. If this is supposed to prove that readers of Breitbart are peculiarly hate-filled, I suggest checking out comments in the Washington Post or The Inquirer. There's plenty of intemperance on the left, let me assure you.

Well, I suppose we can agree that there is intemperance on both sides. But let's try a little perspective. A guy in a rodeo got fired for wearing a clown mask of Obama. A play in Central Park has a lookalike to the sitting president brutally assassinated. The play is still running and has garnered some good reviews. True, Kathy Griffin's severed head joke seems to have backfired. But the idea that both sides do it doesn't excuse anyone who does it. As soon as I see I right-wing call for killing someone I will link to it to deplore it. But the guy in Portland was a Bernie supporter, as was the guy yesterday.

'So the left draws 'first blood' and now gloats! When phase one of upcoming Civil War is complete, it'll be our duty to hunt these "cheerleaders" down, take care of business, and give em' a decent burial.!.!'

You cannot get around that Trump himself fosters the hate groups, including pandering to the KKK and Nazis. No Trump supporter can then throw his or her hands up now and say, "Look how violent those libtards are." Most Americans, of all stripes, can throw their hands up and say, "Look what he's brought this country to."

Indeed, just for instance, even recently, he spoke to anti-LGBTQ group during Pride month. This is an insult to families everywhere. Turns out, his huge support group who lets him get away with his viciousness toward others, are what we know as the evangelicals. So we have broken promises to the LGBTQ groups for the sake of political pandering to the evangelicals. Hoe does this effect you? I don't know. But in my family, my father and his brother were raised by two women who adopted them. May they rest in peace only in God's love while the president fosters deals in hatefulness.

It goes on and on. He is a hateful, selfish man. And we are living in the country who has had to deal this most. Let's not start pointing fingers at each other like we're on opposite sides of some DMZ. We're all on subject at any time to the hate.

Mary & I are about to go out. If she experiences any racial bigotry, will that be left or right?

With a little time in between that garbled post and this one, and yes, Mary & I experienced what appeared to be bigotry while we were at the hospital, maybe not, it's always hard to know.

What we do know, is that we encountered a white woman who was obnoxious to her black co-worker and then to us. The black worker said that she makes her feel like she is not a person. My feeling was that I was not a respectable person to her. (Alternatively, people call me Sir -- probably liberals and conservatives alike.)

This led Mary & I to discuss such politics and rudeness. At one point, I mentioned that, for instance, even though the woman seems like a racial bigot (and such behavior is indeed far more prevalent since Trump ran for president, studies showed, and became president, studies continue to show), it does not mean that the obnoxious apparently bigoted woman necessarily voted for him. Our younger Bush president, to illustrate, had a racially well-integrated administration, and indeed seems to be great friends, he and his wife, with the Obamas. There are conservative and moderate Republicans, who are appaled at both Trump’s behavior and that of his lackeys, especially those whom he has personally insulted along the way.

Next point. Mary, who is a liberal, has been appalled at people who are using the shooting to say that the Republicans deserve this as comeuppance. BTW, for me, to talk about healthcare, the idea that the people who were shot will have good medical coverage ~~ that's not a bad point, but could have waited a day. It’s not a hate crime, but it is rude and borders on the obnoxious. There are people out there, conservative, moderate, and liberal, who have not been taking care of their healthcare, because they cannot afford it. Seeing a someone who took that away from them rushed to a hospital cannot sit well. It is borderline obnoxious, yes, to mention it so soon, even if analytically correct, and emotionally honest ~~ it's bad timing while family and friends of the injured are trying to adjust emotionally and practically to what has taken place.

Furthermore. To be politically obnoxious is not part of being on a political “side”. Trump going against being politically correct, only happened to be a Republican. Eight years earlier, say, he probably would have been a politcally obnoxious Democrat. (And I say “probably” because there seems to be mental deterioration, his being so well spoken decades ago and unable to complete a complex sentence now.) Furthermore, we moderates, including obnoxious ones, are forcibly assigned a side we do not want to belong on. If the article were to cite only liberals who had broken legs, we could not then say that liberals are the broken-legged people. Broken-leggedness belongs to everyone, just as being obnoxious does.

It’s a distraction from the root cause, which we all know is Trump’s call to violence. He did it on the campaign trail and still does it. As long as liberals blame conservatives (which is anyone who disgrees with them) and conservatives blame liberals (same parenthetical), then a never-ending argument ensues, while the ones who are fault, the ones who take it beyond rudeness, beyond obnoxiousness, into hate, get to sit back and laugh, like hitting the person in front of you in a theatre, trying to blame the guy next to the victim. It’s not funny. It’s a tragic whoskidoo.

For anyone who voted for Trump, who incites these arguments, the question must be levelled, “What did you think was going to happen?” What (not who) what behavior did you think you voted for? This, of course: https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/kids-are-quoting-trump-to-bully-their-classmates. Are we to believe that those bullies are conservatives? They’re our children.